Thursday, September 22, 2005

Contact Group supports opening of status talks (Dailies)

Dailies report that Ambassador Kai Eide has briefed the Contact Group in New York on developments in Kosovo.

Based on its sources Koha Ditore writes on the front page that the Contact Group is satisfied in principle that Kosovo enters the final stage before the solution of the status. The paper says that the meeting of the CG political directors held in New York has concluded that “there is visible progress in many fields”, which are assessed as concrete achievements for the opening of the status talks.

If Eide gives the green light, the process for solving Kosovo’s status could start this year, says the lead front-page story in Zëri. “If progress in Kosovo is considered sufficient, we expect the Secretary General Kofi Annan to make necessary preparations for the status process to start before the end of this year, in order for the Security Council to support the process”, the paper quotes a statement issued after the meeting.

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A Jewish Albatross: The Serbs By Julia GorinFrontPageMagazine.com | March 16, 2005

Imagine that a country is fighting domestic terrorism by Muslim militants who are carrying out attacks against police, government officials and citizens in a bid to carve out their own state, hoping to provoke a response from the government that will alarm the international community. Imagine that the world duly intervenes, and a peacekeeping force is sent in, paralyzing the nation’s ability to defend itself, and effectively doing the militants’ bidding even as attacks against the non-Muslim population continue. Finally, imagine the intervening internationals severing this nation’s Jerusalem from it and handing it to the provocateurs.

It sounds like a worst-case scenario for the Israeli people, but it is a fate that actually befell the Serbian people, who this year may lose Kosovo as the deadline approaches for determining the status of the province, where Christian churches, monasteries and homes were burned to the ground in pogroms in March of last year. They will lose Kosovo to Albanian Muslims, whose fates are now entirely in the hands of the international Islamist factions with whom they, and we, cast their lot.

As a reprisal of last March looms on the horizon (Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj stepped down when he was indicted for war crimes last week, and the UN Mission in Kosovo was promptly bombed), the reticence about butchered Serbian octogenarians, children and other civilians--alternating with dismissal of these atrocities, even six years later, as “revenge killings”--intimates that terrorized Serbs are an even bigger yawn than terrorized Israelis. That’s why I am calling upon my fellow Jews to break their own conspicuous silence.

In the six years since our bizarre bombing of Belgrade to prevent a genocide that forensics turned up empty (a memo that apparently made it only to European and Canadian presses, leaving a gaping hole in our national dialogue), the sense of something not being said grows palpable. With every explosive report coming from the Balkans--Islamic charities getting busted as terror-funding fronts, terrorist cells being uncovered in Bosnia and Kosovo, explosions on Pristina’s Bill Clinton Avenue, then last year’s coordinated Albanian riots that injured 900, killed 19 Serbs and tried to drive out what was left of Kosovo’s non-Albanian population--more and more people have started to think it, but who has the poor taste to say it?

After all, we were told that a genocide was in progress. We were told of mass graves. A hundred thousand killed and 800,000 displaced, Bill Clinton said.

Soon after the U.S.-led NATO invasion, the 100,000 figure turned out to be closer to 2,000 and included armed Albanian and Serb fighters. “No Bodies at Rumored Grave Site in Kosovo,” read a Reuters headline as early as October ’99, above an article reporting the results of an excavation by international war crimes investigators to check the rumors that Serbs had hidden up to 700 Albanian bodies in a lead and zinc mine. Other “mass graves” turned up empty or hardly massive, and the Racak massacre, the feather that was used to break the NATO camel’s back, turned out to have been staged, according to three forensics teams sent in to investigate--but only after the first team, headed by Finland’s Helena Ranta, initially gave a thumbs-up to “massacre” so that the bombing campaign could commence. (Two years and thousands of lives later, Ranta’s final report confirmed the opposite conclusion.)

Sold on a Holocaust scenario, the American people couldn’t have known what sinister deal they’d signed on to. But my fellow Jews should have smelled a rat. And to my profound disappointment, in the face of a stunning parallel to the Palestinian propaganda war that Jews themselves struggle with, for the most part they have been silent since.

As journalists fanned the early flames of Serb demonization in Bosnia, starting with a widely circulated 1992 photo of a Serb-run “death camp” for Bosnian Muslims that turned out to have been taken from the inside of a fenced storage area, and showed refugees who had escaped the fighting and were free to go at any time, it should have raised some red flags among my tribe--even if only after the fact. After all, what Jew can forget the NY Times photo from a 2000 riot in Jerusalem, showing an Israeli soldier standing over a bloody young man—the caption identifying the scene as an Israeli policeman and a Palestinian? It subsequently came to bear that the bloody “Palestinian” was a Chicago Yeshiva student who had just been beaten by Palestinians. One need only say the word “Jenin” to a Jew for him to recall the vision of Palestinians digging up old graves to increase the body count there.

But just as Palestinians have been a step ahead of Israelis when it comes to PR, so were Balkan Muslims a step ahead of Serb Christians. Such that when, early on, it came to winning American-Jewish empathy, the Albanian Kosovars were victorious over the Serbs.

A 1994 article in a monthly Jewish publication called “Midstream,” which caught on early, cites an interview between a French journalist named Jacques Merlino and James Harff, of the D.C.-based PR firm Ruder & Finn, which was representing Croatia, Bosnia and the Kosovo Liberation Army. After boasting about having set up meetings between Bosnian officials and Al Gore, George Mitchell, Bob Dole and other politicians, Harff described the achievement he was most proud of: “To have managed to put Jewish opinion on our side…At the beginning of August 1992, ‘New York Newsday’ came out with the affair of [Serb] concentration camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations--B'nai B'rith, Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Jewish Congress. We suggested to them to publish an advertisement in the ‘New York Times’ and to organize demonstrations outside the United Nations. That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the Bosnians, we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind.”

It was a sneak PR attack, and the Serbs were out-sassed. If anyone should have looked deeper into the story being peddled, it was the Jewish community—who ask that people do their homework before making rash judgments about Israeli operations in the Palestinian territories and siding with the visibly more pathetic side. But the magic “genocide” wand was waved, and organized Jewry fell into its autopilot never-again trance.

It’s all the more tragic considering the historical relationship between Jews and Serbs, both of whom were persecuted by the Nazis’ Croatian, Bosnian and Albanian brigades during WWII. In 1999, under pressure from the U.S. and amid protest from Israelis who knew better, Israel joined NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, leaving Serbs stunned and angry in an era when most of Europe was already being engulfed by a new wave anti-Semitism. Today, whatever Jews remained in Kosovo before our intervention have been cleansed right along with the Serbs.

And yet last March 18th, the second day of renewed Serb cleansing, the House of Representatives was treated to the following resolution on Kosovo by Congressman Eliot Engel (D, NY), who chairs the Albanian Issues Caucus: “When there is no resolution of the final status, the people in a country become restless…Right now there is rampant unemployment. Right now there is very little hope for a future…Self-determination and, ultimately, independence for the people of Kosovo is the only solution…What we have seen…is this ridiculous plan called standards before status…We put forward benchmarks and we tell the people of Kosovo they have to achieve these benchmarks before we can even look at a resolution and at self-determination.”

The speech easily could be mistaken for one that makes the case for immediate Palestinian statehood as a way to end “understandable” violence against Israelis. The irony of it coming from a pro-Israel Jewish congressman is too thick for comment, and yet it got thicker when in his closing thoughts Engel employed the penultimate moral-equivalence phrase that Jews find so maddening in reference to Israel: “The ethnic violence which happened yesterday is a tragic undertaking, a tragic tragedy, and I must call on both sides to stop the violence.”

Especially in light of the millions of Christians who today stand with Israel as it fights for the right to defend itself, too few Jews have stood up for the Serb Christians. No, the Serbs are not the Jews. Not every nation, when provoked, plays as tenderly as Israel, whose teen soldiers risk their lives going door to door to pluck the one or two actual terrorists out of a household of complicit family members.

A 2000 documentary on England’s BBC2 showed an interview with KLA leader Hashim Thaci, in which he admitted, "We knew full well that any armed action we undertook would trigger a ruthless retaliation by Serbs against our people. We knew we were endangering civilian lives, too, a great number of lives." There was also a sound bite from a Kosovo Albanian negotiator named Doug Gorani: "The more civilians were killed, the chances of international intervention became bigger, and the KLA of course realized that."

Had we not been looking for mini Holocausts under every bed, had we not responded like Pavlovian dogs when hearing that a modern-day Holocaust was under way in Europe’s underbelly, we could have seen through the hoax, as well as what it portended for Israel.

Instead, cover articles ran in Jewish newspapers across America, such as the one in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles that began, "With echoes of the Holocaust and pogroms haunting a collective conscience, the Jewish community in Los Angeles has mobilized forces to come to the aid of Kosovar refugees left homeless and hungry by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic." A full-page ad read: "OUR HELPING HAND EXTENDS ALL THE WAY TO KOSOVO," and the small print informed readers that the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles had made a donation of $50,000 to the Kosovo Refugee Relief Fund of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.

Only when turning to the letters page did one encounter a dissenting voice. It belonged to self-described researcher and writer Paul Stonehill, who compared the one-sided press coverage to that directed against Israel: “I am sad that because of our misguided policy yet another radical Moslem state will appear in Europe. I am sad that the Serbs, who stood up to the Nazis like very few other people did during the war are bombed by the grandchildren of the Allies. And I am ashamed that some Jews have such selective memory."

In 1999 this selective memory afflicted both the ADL’s Abe Foxman (“We’re glad that we’re doing now what we weren’t doing then [WWII]”), and Elie Wiesel, who approved of bombing Yugoslavia when instead the 1941 words of Adolf Hitler should have been echoing through his head: "As soon as sufficient forces are available and the weather allows, the ground installations of the Yugoslav Air Force and the City of Belgrade will be destroyed from the air by continual day and night bombardment. When that is completed we will subdue Yugoslavia."

Sure enough, within weeks of our offensive, Prince Khaled Bin Sultan, commander of the allied Saudi troops during the first Gulf War, called on NATO and the U.S. to extend its “honorable actions” in Kosovo to Palestine. A few years later, when Kofi Annan sent Helena Ranta to look for evidence of massacre in Jenin, karma came calling. Israel's external adviser on the Jenin inquiry, Cambridge University international legal expert Daniel Bethlehem, warned then, "If the committee's findings uphold the allegations against Israel--even on poor reasoning--this…may make it impossible for Israel to resist calls for an international force, the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state and the prosecution of individuals said to have committed the alleged acts."

When, during Wesley Clark’s clumsy yet merciless 78-day bombardment of the Orthodox Christian Serbs, which didn’t break even for Easter (the way our other bombardments have for Ramadan), the possibility of a precedent for Israel was made clear to then Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon by an Italian ambassador, he asked American Jewish leaders to call for an end to the bombardment against Yugoslavia, citing that the KLA was backed by Iran-backed terror outfits and that an independent Kosovo would be a gateway for the spread of terror throughout Europe.

Whether such an organized Jewish voice emerged is unclear; if it did, it was done quietly, to save face. What has begun to take form since is a humanitarian concern for the remaining Serbs of Kosovo. But its language has been meticulously woven, so as not to backpedal too obviously on our overzealous enforcement of a cheap morality.

But we Jews at least should be trying to set the record straight. Though they were late in coming, entire organizations are devoted to debunking the Muslim-spun mythology against Israel that so many in the media dutifully report. The Serbs have no such face to the outside world, and so they do not get their slice of human sympathy. Nor did the Serbs think to buy clout in the halls of power via lobbyists in the U.S. Congress, where the Albanians, Croatians and Bosnians have been buying influence for decades, from the likes of Bob Dole, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Tom Lantos, Joe Biden, Jesse Helms and Benjamin Gillman, to name just a few. Like the Israelis had for a long time, the Serbs--busy fighting radicals--assumed the ability of the world to see right from wrong, up from down, truth from lie, and didn’t realize they were supposed to be fighting a simultaneous image war. Today, amid a sustained media blackout on the subject of our little 1999 war that has been quietly backfiring and still offers no hint of an exit strategy, Serbian-Americans and others who understand our miscalculation are left feverishly writing letters to editors in response to the many articles that get the Balkans wrong, in a futile attempt to inform the public.

Today, Serbia is the only remaining pocket of multi-ethnicity in the Balkans--where Serbs, gypsies, Jews, Albanian and other Muslims, along with 22 other nationalities still coexist. In fact, when trouble started, many Albanians fled to Belgrade--just as Bosnian Muslims had before them. It’s not unlike the situation of that “racist” state of the Middle East, Israel, with its one million Arab citizens standing in contrast to the surrounding Jew-cleansed Arab lands.

The trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague, meanwhile, was billed as no less than Nuremberg 2. Yet we hear virtually nothing about it. Where are the day-to-day reports of this momentous historical event, dispatches from which should have Americans lining up at the newsstands and scouring their papers for the latest developments? And wouldn’t the biggest trial since Nuremberg at least warrant some punditry?

When one considers also that, more than a year into the trial, the court finally relented from its own one-sidedness and decided it would start trying non-Serbs for war crimes against Serbs as well, the Nuremberg analogy falls apart like a bad joke. How many Jews do we recall being prosecuted at the Nuremberg Trials? And as the Chicago Tribune pointed out on the first anniversary of Milosevic’s trial, Nuremberg took only 11 months “to try, convict, sentence and hang 10 of Adolf Hitler’s top lieutenants.” The Milosevic trial is now in its fourth year.

If, as we were told, there was systematic rape by Serbs, where are the resulting children? Or evidence of mass abortions? Jewish women had Nazi babies, and at Nuremberg there was plenty of testimony and plenty of evidence. So far at the Hague, there has been only testimony (much of which falls apart under cross-examination), and virtually no evidence. Such that the court has had to redefine the very word “genocide”--to at least make it fit what happened in Bosnia after it was unable to make it fit Kosovo. (“War crimes case widens ‘genocide,’” BBC.com, April 19, 2004). Hence we arrive at a state of affairs wherein the UN declares 70,000 dead men, women and children in Darfur to not be genocide, but 7,000 dead Bosnian males in the UN “safe haven” Srebrenica--used as a staging ground for attacks on Serbs--is.

While Byzantine art exhibits at New York museums were humming last year, 900-year-old Serb churches, cathedrals and monasteries in Kosovo were being systematically bombed, burned, looted, and urinated on in a single week. The pogroms had been set off by a rumor, later confirmed false by NATO, that Serbs had drowned some Albanian youths. By the end of March, 366 homes and 41 churches were destroyed, according to an AP report, which quoted 23 year-old Ruzhdi Krasniqi, who “smoked a cigarette as he assessed the damage and said he felt ‘OK’ about [it]. ‘I don't want the Serbs to return here,’ he said. ‘They've got no place here.’”

In response to the violence, Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova told an Italian newspaper, "Everyone realizes by now that it is clear that independence from Serbia is vital for Kosovo and its inhabitants."

Though he is a moderate and has had at least two attempts on his life because of it, Rugova seems to have followed the Arafat model: Accept the infidel’s (the West’s) help for as long as it moves you closer to your goal. When you hit the inevitable brick wall with the infidel and he ceases to further your agenda, revert to traditional methods and allow violence to engulf the region, turning your guns against the helpful infidel if necessary. Then propose independence as the only possible solution.

Independence, of course, would mean withdrawing UN peacekeepers. As Balkan-based journalist Chris Deliso wrote last year for BalkanAnalysis.com, “Even though they are inept…the UN contingents cannot be replaced by local enforcers without serious repercussions for Europe and America. With no foreign eyes and ears on the ground, pretty much anything can happen….terrorists abroad look for safe havens in states with little or no central control…Kosovo--with its porous borders, fundamentalist minority, criminal underbelly and proximity to the rest of Europe--is a perfect hiding place.” He concludes, “With successes like that, who needs failures?”

But Americans don’t see how Kosovo relates to them. Until 1999, who had ever even heard of a Serb? It was neither an enemy nor a significant international player. So this people and what happened to their country do not occupy any coherent place in the American psyche.

Without being innocent, a people can still be scapegoated and a falsified history go down in the books. Serbs have apologized repeatedly for the heavy hand that Belgrade wielded in responding to the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo and Bosnia. They have admitted they are not innocent, while the instigators themselves admit nothing, continue crying out against past Serb crimes, and kill with abandon.

That the Serbs haven’t been innocent cannot continue to be used to mischaracterize the Balkan conflicts and our actions there. Starting with a mistaken premise and working backwards to prove it, then devolving into moral equivalence when it doesn’t work must stop. A reevaluation must begin. Whether it does or not, history’s reckoning will come, such that after an air war against a fictitious enemy, we may have to fight a ground war against the real one.

The world stood by while one-third of its Jews were exterminated last century. This century, the Jews stand by idly with the world as a people’s history is erased. Serbia is reviled, for like Israel, it had the poor taste to not wait for 9/11 to start the resistance against a common enemy.

That’s why, in sounding the call for Serb rehabilitation, I apply a double standard to my fellow Jews. They should be used to it. The Serbs are.

Here wo go again, rebufing the serbian lies.And be sure to read it this time...

"The Jews, the Serbs, and the Truth

By Stephen SchwartzFrontPageMagazine.com | March 21, 2005

On March 16, 2005, FrontPageMagazine.com published an article titled “A Jewish Albatross: The Serbs,” by Julia Gorin. The text included a number of factual inaccuracies and allegations, and has been interpreted by some American Jewish leaders as a serious impeachment of their moral judgment regarding the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.

As a journalist and author engaged with Balkan Jewish history and social issues for almost 30 years, I do not think anybody could be more aware than myself of the sensitivities involved in assessing the relations between Jews, Serbs, and the other Balkan and South Slavic peoples. My own book, Sarajevo Rose, on Jewish-Muslim relations in the Western Balkans, has just been published. While it is a daunting task, it is nonetheless worthwhile, in my view, to address the factual errors in Ms. Gorin’s contribution.

Ms. Gorin begins by inferring that violence by Kosovar Albanians may be described as “terrorism by Muslim militants.” There are not now and never have been, in recent times, “Muslim militants” in Kosovo, aside from a handful of individuals and some Saudi and other Gulf Arab-state cells operating through relief agencies. Kosovar Albanians include a large Catholic minority, who are no less nationalist in their sentiments than Muslims. The three armed groups involved in the war against Serbia – the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA-UCK), the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo (FARK) and the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo (LKCK) all included Catholics as well as Muslims in positions of command and other authority. None was organized on an Islamist basis. The most famous Albanian of modern times was Mother Teresa. Her biographer, a personal friend of mine, is an Albanian Catholic priest, Don Lush Gjergji, who lives in a mixed Albanian-Serb town in Kosovo, called Vitia. There are Catholic parishes all over Kosovo.

The above-noted statement by Ms. Gorin is further elaborated with the claim that Serbs “will lose Kosovo to Albanian Muslims, whose fates are now entirely in the hands of the international Islamist factions with whom they, and we, cast their lot.” While Serbia may lose Kosovo, it will not be to Muslims alone, but to an overwhelming Albanian majority of Muslims and Catholics. No “international Islamist factions” are present in Kosovo or presently involved with Kosovo. No “international Islamist factions” were involved in the Kosovo war. Even the previously-mentioned Saudis and other Gulf Arab subjects, operating through relief agencies, were only active outside Kosovo, in Albania and Macedonia, until fighting in Kosovo ended. Their representatives in Kosovo have been investigated, arrested, and expelled, or their activities otherwise seriously limited. Kosovar Muslims are extremely anti-Islamist and pro-American. Albania arrested and deported the Islamist group of “Albanian Returnees” to Egypt, where they were tried and executed, and has seized the property of an al-Qaida financier, Yasin Kadi, who resides in Saudi Arabia. Responsibility for antiterrorist legal action against Saudi and other foreign Islamist agents in Macedonia, who continue to represent a problem, belongs with the Slav central authorities in Macedonia, not the Albanians.

Ms. Gorin implies that Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is a Muslim extremist. Ramush Haradinaj is not a religious person. He has never been involved or associated with any Islamic cause. He has no association with Islamist ideology whatever. He is not even a “cultural Muslim.”

Ms. Gorin states that NATO bombed Serbia “to prevent a genocide that forensics turned up empty.” Yes, the genocide was prevented. It did not take place. Nobody claimed it had taken place, only that it was attempted. Genocide means the murder of a whole people; obviously, the Albanians were not wholly murdered. Ms. Gorin further refers to “every explosive report coming from the Balkans – Islamic charities getting busted as terror-funding fronts, terrorist cells being uncovered in Bosnia and Kosovo,” as if this undermines the reputation for moderation of Balkan Muslims. The facts, as partly described above, show the exact opposite. Albania has treated Islamist agents very harshly. The Islamic charities were shut down in Bosnia-Hercegovina by the Bosnian authorities, who seized irreplaceable evidence of al-Qaida activity in Europe and turned it over to U.S. investigators. Remaining members of terrorist cells were also identified and neutralized with the support of the Bosnian authorities. No Islamist cells were ever detected in Kosovo aside from the aforementioned Saudi and Gulf Arab charity representatives, who have, as noted, been investigated, arrested, and expelled, or their activities otherwise radically curtailed.

In the same paragraph, Ms. Gorin refers to the March riots in Kosovo last year as “coordinated.” No serious journalistic or international administrative body has made such a claim. The turmoil in Kosovo in March 2004 was spontaneous, caused in the greater part by disaffection with rule by the United Nations, a high rate of unemployment, the failure to consistently restore public services such as water and electricity, the collapse of the pension system, refusal to privatize the economy, and related grievances.

Ms. Gorin states, “We were told of mass graves… 800,000 displaced, Bill Clinton said.” Mass graves indeed have been uncovered in Kosovo, and that fact is challenged by nobody. They are numerous and the work of excavating them is long and taxing. Almost a million Kosovar Albanians were displaced, expelled, and fled to Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and even to Serbia, as was seen on news reports broadcast throughout the world. The large refugee camps in Macedonia, Albania, and Montenegro were not fabrications.

Ms. Gorin has attempted to downgrade the number of Albanian victims of Serbian aggression in Kosovo from “100,000” to “closer to 2,000.” The figure of 100,000 dead or missing was put forward during the Kosovo intervention when there were no international journalists or NGOs inside Kosovo. It was an estimate. The accepted figure today, issued by Catholic authorities, is approximately 12,500 Albanians killed or missing, many of them children. I do not wish to play numbers games on this, as I consider it as degrading as responding to challenges over the numbers of Jews killed in the Holocaust.

Ms. Gorin states that “the Racak massacre… turned out to have been staged.” This is a false claim that cannot be seriously sustained. Those who make the assertion join it to the charge that the U.S. diplomat William Walker, who visited Racak after the massacre occurred, was also a supporter of “death squads” in Central America. Both charges originate in the Marxist left and are scurrilous and disreputable.

Ms. Gorin states that “journalists fanned the early flames of Serb demonization in Bosnia, starting with a widely circulated 1992 photo of a Serb-run ‘death camp’ for Bosnian Muslims that turned out to have been taken from the inside of a fenced storage area, and showed refugees who had escaped the fighting and were free to go at any time.” The charge that the photograph was false was a hoax perpetrated by British Communists and has been thoroughly debunked. The magazine that published the claim, with the illustrative title Living Marxism, lost a libel suit brought by the ITN television network, to the total of 375,000 British pounds. The British court found against Living Marxism for its spurious accusation that ITN and other British journalists were fabricators of anti-Serb propaganda.

Ms. Gorin restates the well-known and controversial claim that “Jews and Serbs, both… were persecuted by the Nazis’ Croatian, Bosnian and Albanian brigades during WWII.” While this oft-repeated charge contains a grain of truth, it is only a grain. The lowest rate of Jewish survival in ex-Yugoslavia in World War II was in Macedonia, which was under Bulgarian control, and where 90 percent of Jews were deported and killed. The highest rate was in Kosovo, where 62 percent of Jews survived. Serbia and Croatia (the latter including Bosnia-Hercegovina) both had high levels of Jewish martyrdom during the Holocaust. The Serbian capital, Beograd, was declared by the Germans the first Judenrein, or “Jew-free” city in Europe. In Bosnia, the infamous Bosnian Waffen SS units played no role in the removal of Jews on their territory, which was carried out by Germans and Croats. The Bosnian Waffen SS units were assigned to combat Muslim and Serb Partisans, including residents of villages from where many of the recruits themselves originated. They were reluctant to participate in such actions, having enlisted in the Waffen SS on the mistaken belief that such service would resemble that of the Bosnian gendarmerie under the Habsburg empire. They were sent by the Germans to France for retraining. There they mutinied against their Nazi officers and attempted to join the French Partisans, the only known example of a Waffen SS rebellion. By 1944, most of them had joined the Yugoslav Partisans. In addition, the Bosnian Muslim clerics issued three declarations publicly denouncing Croat-Nazi collaborationist measures against Jews and Serbs: that of Sarajevo in October 1941, of Mostar in 1941, and of Banja Luka on November 12, 1941. These fascinating documents have never been translated and published in English, but I am completing work on them for publication now. As to the Albanians, while it is true that the Albanian Waffen SS Skanderbeg division turned some 210 Jews in Kosovo over to the Nazis, not one Jew was handed over in Albania itself, which was the only country to come out of the second world war with a larger Jewish population than it had at the beginning of the war. This fact has been noted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and by Yad Vashem in Israel, where Albanian Muslims have been honored as “righteous Gentiles.”

Ms. Gorin states “In 1999, under pressure from the U.S. and amid protest from Israelis who knew better, Israel joined NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, leaving Serbs stunned and angry in an era when most of Europe was already being engulfed by a new wave anti-Semitism [sic]. Today, whatever Jews remained in Kosovo before our intervention have been cleansed right along with the Serbs.” These two statements are entirely incorrect. Israel played no role in the NATO action against Yugoslavia except to provide medical aid and shelter to Albanian refugees, and I do not understand why such an accusation of involvement in military action would be made against Israel. A Jewish Community now exists in Kosovo, headquartered in Prizren and recognized by the Joint Distribution Committee, the main global Jewish relief organization.

Ms. Gorin refers to U.S. bombings “of the Orthodox Christian Serbs, which didn’t break even for Easter (the way our other bombardments have for Ramadan).” U.S. bombardments and other combat actions have not ceased during Ramadan, and there is no Islamic requirement barring military action during Ramadan. Muslims have fought during Ramadan on many occasions.

In the same paragraph, Ms. Gorin states, “an Italian ambassador… asked American Jewish leaders to call for an end to the bombardment against Yugoslavia, citing that the KLA was backed by Iran-backed terror outfits and that an independent Kosovo would be a gateway for the spread of terror throughout Europe.” The “Italian ambassador” and the “Iran-backed terror outfits” are left unnamed. I do not doubt that an Italian diplomat, probably concerned about the influx of Albanian refugees into his country, might have made such an irresponsible statement and could be named; I would be interested to know his identity. “Iran-backed terror outfits” involved in Kosovo cannot be named because they did not exist. Iranians were not and are not involved in Kosovo at all, even though the Kosovar Albanian Muslim population is at least 30 percent Shia. Either way, Kosovo has not become a gateway for the spread of terror throughout Europe; the charge would better be applied to Britain, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy itself.

Ms. Gorin states “Today, Serbia is the only remaining pocket of multi-ethnicity in the Balkans – where Serbs, gypsies, Jews, Albanian and other Muslims, along with 22 other nationalities still coexist.” This is incorrect. All the stated nationalities reside, some in quite large groups, in Slovenia and Croatia, which do not like being considered Balkan, but also in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro (without many Jews historically or now), and Macedonia, as well as Serbia. Macedonia has a Gypsy television network, which is unique in the world. There are no ethnically-pure territories in former Yugoslavia.

Ms. Gorin expresses displeasure that the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in The Hague has taken four years. She might better express appreciation at the high standards and patient work of the tribunal. She neglected to mention that Milosevic was turned over to the tribunal by the Serbian authorities.

In a statement of questionable taste, Ms. Gorin asks, “If, as we were told, there was systematic rape by Serbs, where are the resulting children? Or evidence of mass abortions?” Anybody who has visited the former Yugoslavia knows of the lives of these children, and also knows that “mass” abortions did not take place. What, in any case, is a “mass abortion”? An abortion carried out collectively, all at once, in a group? “Mass abortions” do not exist anywhere.

Ms. Gorin suggests that Kosovar Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova is an Islamist who, like Yasir Arafat, “Accept[s] the infidel’s (the West’s) help for as long as it moves you closer to your goal.” In reality, as anybody knowledgeable about the topic knows, Arafat was not a Muslim in the religious sense. He did not attend Muslim prayers except on official occasions and is said not to have known the text of the prayers. Ibrahim Rugova, like Ramush Haradinaj, is not a religious person. He also has never been involved or associated with any Islamic cause. He also has no association with Islamist ideology whatever. He also is not even a “cultural Muslim.”

Ms. Gorin quotes “Balkan-based journalist Chris Deliso [who] wrote last year for BalkanAnalysis.com, ‘Kosovo – with its porous borders, fundamentalist minority, criminal underbelly and proximity to the rest of Europe – is a perfect hiding place.’ ” Christopher Deliso is not a serious journalist, but a columnist at Dennis Raimondo’s antiwar.com website. Kosovo is the most heavily-policed, militarily-occupied region in Europe. It does not now and has never had a “fundamentalist minority” in the sense the term is now understood, and no serious evidence to the contrary can be produced. “Hiding place” for whom? Even before September 11, 2001, Saudi and other Gulf Arab agents had been, to repeat, investigated, arrested, and expelled, or their activities otherwise seriously limited.

It is rather surprising to read in Ms. Gorin’s column, “Americans don’t see how Kosovo relates to them. Until 1999, who had ever even heard of a Serb?” Serbian-Americans are a well-known community in numerous states, such as California, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, and include such prominent politicians as Rod Blagojevich, the current Democrat governor of Illinois. The Serbian-American poet Charles Simic won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1990, and his translations of the Serbian poet Vasko Popa are taught in many university departments. The Yugoslav author Danilo Kis, who was of Serbian and Hungarian-Jewish origin, and wrote in Serbian dialect, is widely known among literate Americans. Much more Serbian literature has been published in English in the U.S., over many years, than Slovene, Croatian, Bosnian, Macedonian, or Albanian literature. The Yugoslav political writer Milovan Djilas always defined himself as a Montenegrin and Serb, and was universally known in political and journalistic circles. Hundreds of doctoral dissertations and other academic studies on Serbian topics have been produced at American universities.Ms. Gorin is welcome to her opinions, but they are only opinions, and are not based on verifiable fact. To challenge the American Jewish leadership for its position on the Balkans 10 years ago is, at best, unproductive. The entire world witnessed the actions of the Milosevic regime in ex-Yugoslavia. They cannot be expunged from the historical record by creating false parallels. Serbia is not now, and will never be, Israel. It is, in reality, a place where crude Jew-baiting is on the rise, as demonstrated in a recent reportage, which may be read here.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Stephen Schwartz, an author and journalist, is author of The Two Faces of Islam: The House of Sa'ud from Tradition to Terror. A vociferous critic of Wahhabism, Schwartz is a frequent contributor to National Review, The Weekly Standard, and other publications."

here we go again, when no Albanian has killed anybody in the world today for Ctrl+C Ctrl+V to report here, he brings back the issue of fundamentalism. he's only forgetting (or is he?) that the biggest religous extremists in the Balkans are his Serb brothers in head with the Serb Orthodox church which blesses and hides from justice such criminals as Karadic and Mladic.

Over and out.

P.S. So what about the CG meeting? Does Eide matter? Please, englighten us Martyr with your mid-level sources inside UNMIK. :)

WHAT???????????? ARE U KIDDING ME, SCHWARTZ???? His comments are so full of nonsense, easily able to put down and crush them. He offers NO evidence to back any of his lies up. Here is just a sampling of a few things:

1. he says that there were no Muslim militants in kosovo, here is a quick link to shut u up regarding that onehttp://www.balkanpeace.org/our/our09.shtml

2."genocide was prevented"???? what about the genocide against the serbs that this asshole supports??? the serbs were cleansed from kosovo over the past 100 years TOTALLY, WHERE WAS HE TO PREVENT TAHT???????? WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE THAT THERE WAS A GRAND PLAN (THEY CANT EVEN PROVE IT AT THE HAUGE DUDE, THE JUDGES LAUGHED AT NICE'S FACE WHEN HE COULDNT COME UP WITH ENEN ONE SENTANCE WHERE MILOSEVIC ENDORSED A GREATER SERBIA) WHERe is the proof that it was being planned? FACT IS TAHT BILL COHEN CAME OUT ON "MEET THE PRESS" AND CLAIMED THAT 500,000 ALBANIAC MEN WERE MISSING PRESUMED DEAD ARE U KIDDING ME??????? WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT FOR SHCWARTZ TO EVEN SAY THIS, ITs AN INSULT TO HIS OWN INTELLIGENCE, AND YES FACT IS TAHT THERE IS EVIDENCE OF ONLY 2,100 DEAD ALBANIACS MOSTLY KLA, MORE SERBS WERE KILLED IN KOSOVO the PAST 8 years.

3. he has the balls to tackle Gorins claim of the mass graves?? dude at least be quiet, u got away with the FUCKING LIES, fact is that the albos claimed mass graves left and right all over kosovo and NOTHING CAME UP NOTHING (EX. that there were 2k bodies in the trepca mines and 0 were found) LIES 2k KLA assholes were killed (rightfully), what did u expect for the serb army and police not to fire back at someone who is shotting at them within their internationally recognised borders?

5. this one is such deception that he as a jew should be ashamed of actually arguing for the nazis!!!! "the ss units in bosnia played no role.." dude the level of anti serb propaganda has altered this mans perception of reality and history. 62 % of the jews of kosovo survied???? dude there was 200 jews in kosovo during ww2!!! "Belgrade juden free"?? how can u dumb albaniacs use this as somwthing u want to point to as if it helps ur nazi cause? belgrade was bombed on april 6 41', 12k people dead, teh nazis controlled belgrade, teh serbs were the only people in teh region to fight the nazis, the vast majority of the partizans werer serbs. (the nazis had passed laws in serbia "for every dead german officer 1,000 serb civillians to be shot") 7k massacred in kragujevac alone! are u kidding me???? pathetic attempt to twist histroy and the present. u can only get away with this with someone that knows nothing about the region.

Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden -- who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans.

The KLA members, embraced by the Clinton administration in NATO's 41-day bombing campaign to bring Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table, were trained in secret camps in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and elsewhere, according to newly obtained intelligence reports.

The reports also show that the KLA has enlisted Islamic terrorists -- members of the Mujahideen --as soldiers in its ongoing conflict against Serbia, and that many already have been smuggled into Kosovo to join the fight.

Known to its countrymen as the Ushtria Clirimatare e Kosoves, the KLA has as many as 30,000 members, a number reportedly on the rise as a result of NATO's continuing bombing campaign. The group's leadership, including Agim Ceku, a former Croatian army brigadier general, has rapidly become a political and military force in the Balkans.

The intelligence reports document what is described as a "link" between bin Laden, the fugitive Saudi millionaire, and the KLA --including a common staging area in Tropoje, Albania, a center for Islamic terrorists. The reports said bin Laden's organization, known as al-Qaeda, has both trained and financially supported the KLA.

Many border crossings into Kosovo by "foreign fighters" also have been documented and include veterans of the militant group Islamic Jihad from Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. Many of the crossings originated in neighboring Albania and, according to the reports, included parties of up to 50 men.

Jane's International Defense Review, a highly respected British Journal, reported in February that documents found last year on the body of a KLA member showed that he had escorted several volunteers into Kosovo, including more than a dozen Saudi Arabians. Each volunteer carried a passport identifying him as a Macedonian Albanian.

Bin Laden and his military commander, Mohammed Atef, were named in a federal indictment handed up in November in New York for the simultaneous explosions Aug. 7 at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The indictment accused the two men of directing the attacks, which injured more than 5,000 people.

The indictment said bin Laden, working through al-Qaeda, forged alliances with government officials in Iran, the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and an Iranian terrorist organization known as Hezbollah. He was indicted earlier this year by a federal grand jury in New York for his suspected terrorist activities.

The al-Qaeda is believed to have targeted U.S. embassies and American soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia and Somalia. The organization also is accused of housing and training terrorists, and of raising money to support their causes.

The State Department, along with other federal agencies, offered a $5 million reward last year for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the two men. Mr. Clinton ordered a retaliatory attack on training bases controlled by bin Laden in Afghanistan and a chemical factory near Khartoum, Sudan, after the bombings.

Last year, while State Department officials labeled the KLA a terrorist organization, saying it bankrolled its operations with proceeds from the heroin trade and from loans from known terrorists like bin Laden, the department listed the group as an "insurgency" organization in its official reports. The officials charged that the KLA used terrorist tactics to assault Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians in a campaign to achieve independence.

The KLA's involvement in drug smuggling as a means of raising funds for weapons is long-standing. Intelligence documents show it has aligned itself with an extensive organized crime network in Albania that smuggles heroin to buyers throughout Western Europe and the United States. Drug agents in five countries believe the cartel is one of the most powerful heroin smuggling organizations in the world.

The documents show heroin and some cocaine is moved over land and sea from Turkey through Bulgaria, Greece and Yugoslavia to Western Europe and elsewhere. The circuit has become known as the "Balkan Route."

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said in a recent report that drug smuggling organizations composed of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians were considered "second only to Turkish gangs as the predominant heroin smugglers along the Balkan Route."

Greek Interpol representatives have called Kosovo's ethnic Albanians "the primary sources of supply for cocaine and heroin in that country."

France's Geopolitical Observatory of Drugs said the KLA was a key player in the rapidly expanding drugs-for-arms business and helped transport $2 billion in drugs a year into Western Europe.

German drug agents said $1.5 billion in drug profits is laundered annually by Kosovo smugglers, through as many as 200 private banks or currency-exchange offices.

Jane's Intelligence Review estimated in March that drug sales could have netted the KLA profits in the "high tens of millions of dollars." It said the KLA had rearmed itself for a spring offensive with the aid of drug money, along with donations from Albanians in Western Europe and the United States.

I had only one problem with this Balkanpeace.org thing, it lists Kosovo section under the Serb ultra-nationalist term Kosovo and Metohia. I'm not sure how fair it is, you know? And it also has a section dedicated to "SuitS against NATO" :).

I also wanted to urge the world communtiy and especially Britain to withdraw indepedence of Canada. Jerry Seper of Washington Times has found out there are some terrorists there. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=5224

Good point last blogger. Martyr (here goes the Muslim sexist in me again :)) can't even spell moron correctly. If you are so sure there won't be independence, I wonder why you come here to pollute this blog with agit-prop that reminds me of the communist days. Is it because you're not so sure of your mid-level sources inside UNMIK? :)

Did you hear this interesting news from BBC: Orthodox priests crucified this young lady to death while trying to exorcise her. She was suffering from schizophrenia.

HAhahhaa, arianit, hallal te koft shoki, the last remark cracked me up, I thought I knew of all the stupid things Serbs are capable of, but crucifying a young lady.

I want you guys to start a guessing-game with me here; How old is Martyr?

I say 12 years...others??

Ohh yeah,,,martyr, your Serb friend Mihajlovic (the one that killed Anna Lindh and proved Swedes, including my professor that Serbs are as he said: "Violent people in a violent nation", well anyways Mihajlovic recently tried to kill a 60 year old fellow inmate, trying to re-enact the wars Serbs started, he was trying to massacre a boshnjak.. only problem, the 60-year old man wasn't serb...

I think CTRL+C CTRL+Z is about 27 or 28 but has the mentality of a 12 year old.Also I think he does not live in Kosova nor has he ever been there. He is one of those ultra nacionalist Serbs that defends the "ancient Serbian heartland" from deep within a village around Kragujevac.I'm just surprised they have internet access there!??!!?!

WHAT???????????? ARE U KIDDING ME, SCHWARTZ???? His comments are so full of nonsense, easily able to put down and crush them. He offers NO evidence to back any of his lies up. Here is just a sampling of a few things:

1. he says that there were no Muslim militants in kosovo, here is a quick link to shut u up regarding that onehttp://www.balkanpeace.org/our/our09.shtml

2."genocide was prevented"???? what about the genocide against the serbs that this asshole supports??? the serbs were cleansed from kosovo over the past 100 years TOTALLY, WHERE WAS HE TO PREVENT TAHT???????? WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE THAT THERE WAS A GRAND PLAN (THEY CANT EVEN PROVE IT AT THE HAUGE DUDE, THE JUDGES LAUGHED AT NICE'S FACE WHEN HE COULDNT COME UP WITH ENEN ONE SENTANCE WHERE MILOSEVIC ENDORSED A GREATER SERBIA) WHERe is the proof that it was being planned? FACT IS TAHT BILL COHEN CAME OUT ON "MEET THE PRESS" AND CLAIMED THAT 500,000 ALBANIAC MEN WERE MISSING PRESUMED DEAD ARE U KIDDING ME??????? WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT FOR SHCWARTZ TO EVEN SAY THIS, ITs AN INSULT TO HIS OWN INTELLIGENCE, AND YES FACT IS TAHT THERE IS EVIDENCE OF ONLY 2,100 DEAD ALBANIACS MOSTLY KLA, MORE SERBS WERE KILLED IN KOSOVO the PAST 8 years.

3. he has the balls to tackle Gorins claim of the mass graves?? dude at least be quiet, u got away with the FUCKING LIES, fact is that the albos claimed mass graves left and right all over kosovo and NOTHING CAME UP NOTHING (EX. that there were 2k bodies in the trepca mines and 0 were found) LIES 2k KLA assholes were killed (rightfully), what did u expect for the serb army and police not to fire back at someone who is shotting at them within their internationally recognised borders?

5. this one is such deception that he as a jew should be ashamed of actually arguing for the nazis!!!! "the ss units in bosnia played no role.." dude the level of anti serb propaganda has altered this mans perception of reality and history. 62 % of the jews of kosovo survied???? dude there was 200 jews in kosovo during ww2!!! "Belgrade juden free"?? how can u dumb albaniacs use this as somwthing u want to point to as if it helps ur nazi cause? belgrade was bombed on april 6 41', 12k people dead, teh nazis controlled belgrade, teh serbs were the only people in teh region to fight the nazis, the vast majority of the partizans werer serbs. (the nazis had passed laws in serbia "for every dead german officer 1,000 serb civillians to be shot") 7k massacred in kragujevac alone! are u kidding me???? pathetic attempt to twist histroy and the present. u can only get away with this with someone that knows nothing about the region.

You can't have a civilized discussion with the Serbs. Their war criminal dads, uncles, cousins,priests told them that the Serbs are the people chosen by God thus they have the right to kill children, rape and mutilate pregnant women, and kill elders if they are not Serbs.

using stephen schwartz for a rebuttal is like using an albanian who is sympathetic to the old Yugoslav government as an advocate for Kosovo Albanians in the upcoming negotiations...perhaps your limited comprehension can grasp that concept.

We close tonights show with another brain-wrecking puzzle :"KOSOVO IS PART OF SERBIA" Pls mail your comments to Serbia and Montenegro's Cadastral Office by next week. You've been watching another edition of 'Spot the Error'.